There’s an interesting article on TerraNova discussing the game that is drawing more attention and curiosity recently: Eve-Online.

The article linked repeats concepts that I already know and some that I find almost irrelevant and that are instead once again brought up as if the whole game is focused around them (all these discussions about the economies go nowhere and bore me to death). But there’s a part I want to quote and that has a weight in the recent debate that rised with the announce of more content that 95% of the playerbase will never see, most likely (see Zxyrox’s rant, for example):

A solo career in EVE can be just as rewarding a thing, but there is also a vast stretch of the game (most of it?) that is not accessible unless you’re part of a player corporation and even an alliance of corps. The benefit of social interaction in EVE is much greater than in WoW. (In a sense, what it comes down to is that CCP isn’t afraid to make a good bit of its game off limits to most of its players. In fact, this can be seen even at the early stages, given that the game’s learning curve is so much steeper than almost any other MMO.)

And here is where I have 20+ Firefox and Wordpad windows open and following way too many lines of thought and things I’m writing at the same time. So watch this daring association:

Then let me touch on a controversial topic that is definitely related: entitlement to content vs. opportunity to experience content. This is hotly debated, has been, and will be. Because, really, nobody is right except when speaking for only them. The reality is there are, in this case, two types of people: those who want to play a game where they are entitled to experience everything, obtain everything, etc. merely because they pay the fee and put some time in, though it had better be time in allotments and at a frequency that works with the rest of their lives. And then there are those who want more of a challenge and don’t mind indirect competition and finite resources and realize, that unless they really try hard, they’re not going to achieve everything, or see everything – but they also think that’s fine – in fact, arguably, it makes the world more real – you can’t see every square foot of the real world, after all – and you always need something to dream about, or another goal to head towards..

This was Brad McQuaid on the recent debate about the use of instancing. See how it fits? I’ll have to return on this topic because the real point is that these two comments are strongly clashing together even if they seem to agree. The “accessibility barriers” in Eve are completely different from those that Brad is hinting and it’s all about the actual scope of the world simulated. Something that is completely lacking in the world that Brad has in his mind (exclusively focused on achievement). While in Eve (even if with an high risk of failing) the bigger toys available only for a minority are supposed to indirectly create content for everyone else as well. There’s A LOT to delve about this, for now I’ll just let you guess what I mean.

But what is more interesting is what was written in the comments of the thread I linked above and that is actually pertinent to the title I wrote:

Ronald:
Between EVE’s highly specialized, organized economic system and WOW’s one-man-shop economy, which one is better in reducing farmers’ activity?

My first impression is that EVE’s system enables a higher “entrance barrier” for farmers. However, a well-organized farmer corporation with workers working 24/7 will be very efficient in making money in EVE.

Repub Arnaz:
The difference is that farmers are hunted in EVE.

There are several ways for players of EVE to profit by destroying/reporting/griefing the macro miners.
As soon as you find one, you send out a petition to cover your butt, then steal all their ore if they’re doing jet-can mining (where they jettison an open container and drop their ore as they mine into it). The jet-can is considered “trash” and you can very easily steal it.

If they’re doing it in Empire (high security) space, and they shoot at you (this is quite common since oftentimes they’re not “up” on the game system), you can then shield boost and wait for CONCORD to blow them away, allowing you to then pick up whatever high-end components are left of their ship(s).

Macro miners are PREY, and EVE is full of hungry predators. Quite funny that they’ve been turned into targets by the rules of EVE.

Bingo.

I find this comment interesting because it proves one of my ideas correct. When I wrote about it I didn’t know that Eve-Online was already using that model successfully and so I’m glad to find a confirmation.

This is the comment I added:
“That’s the fundamental point, in WoW you are protected and farming is just about tapping resources and waste your time.

In Eve you are exposed. The farmers would be excused right in the game and have to bend their behaviour to the game rules. They become in-game entities and won’t be able to disrupt the game through external intervention. So they are somewhat “digested” by the game.”

And this was already discussed for my “dream mmorpg” with the exact same purpose: solve the RMT “plague” at the root by “repositioning” the game systems where they are appropriate. In particular in the comments I wrote down more details about my stance on this.

My ideal game has three layers to defend itself from this negative external intervention. The first is the one that now I find in Eve and that is confirmed as valid (PvP exposition). The second is about the division between “player-centered tools” and “commodities” so that the farmers would be forced to organize and relate with the community (while the farmers usually isolate themselves and hide from it) and the third is still secret :) (it’s about the role of the “fallen houses”, aka player created factions)

Knowing that the first already works as intended is a confirmation that my goals could be possibly reached and aren’t all that foolish.